


A Hundred Green Ink Kisses

by Mottlemoth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguments, M/M, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Post-Break Up, Rampant Feelings, one last chance, relationship drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 17:28:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11902614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mottlemoth/pseuds/Mottlemoth
Summary: Greg and Mycroft's tempestuous relationship has been on and off for six years now. When it looks like things might be off for good, Greg makes plans to move away - but one last chance is coming.





	A Hundred Green Ink Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> This story is thanks to a prompt from the wonderful Elaine27: "Please, don't leave. I beg you, please." 
> 
> My gratitude also goes to Avid, who very kindly beta-read this fic for me - and to my fantastic friend lmirandas, who commissioned the legendary Khorazir to illustrate a scene from this story. Liz, you are far too kind. Thank you so much... <3

__

  

They were off when the e-mail arrived.

_Toronto Police Service are looking for senior UK detectives interested in starting a new life in Ontario, Canada. Toronto police are the country’s highest-paid officers - wages have increased 11 per cent over the last six years…_

Six years.

Six years of Mycroft, too.

They’d always been more on than off. This recent spell looked like it was going to last, though. Greg had thought it would fix itself after a month or so. One lonely night, and there’d be a text or a call - then one perfect night to follow, and in a blaze of glory they’d be back together again, addicted to each other, moving in within a week, fucking every spare second, tangled up in Greg’s bed sheets from six PM on Friday until eight AM on Monday - talking, laughing, kissing until his jaw hurt. Greg knew the pattern. They’d been through all this before.

“It’s fine,” he’d told Sherlock, when the latest off had been announced. “He just needs space for a while. You know what he’s like.”

But then a month had gone by, and then another - and the weeks had pulled themselves together like beads on a string.

It had been half a year now.

Greg was sick of London - sick of the noise, sick of the people. This city was bleaching his soul. Mycroft was the only thing who’d ever saturated him again. Every time they were on, he flooded Greg’s life with colour and passion - taking off for the weekend to Prague and never seeing a thing outside the hotel room, candle-lit dinners in every restaurant in London, screaming fights at two AM in the rain.

Mycroft got under his skin.

He made everything feel real. When they were on, Greg could whirl through every single human emotion in the span of a single evening, and end it feeling like he’d never loved and hated one person so much in his life.

Then when they were off - like now - it felt like someone had capped his soul. Forty percent, maybe.

And the world was grey, and it was quiet.

He read the e-mail about Toronto, tired at his desk on another rainy Monday -  _tired,_ he thought, and it wasn’t even ten. He gazed at the pictures of happy previous recruits, their big houses, their beaming families, the glorious new lives they’d stepped into, just like that.

He told himself he was replying just for more details - just to see, in case anyone in his division asked.

 

* * *

 

It was mainly the money, in the end.

He couldn’t fucking turn that figure down.

And what the hell was there here anymore? His parents were gone. His brother was up in Glasgow. Even Sherlock and John were talking about heading to the Sussex Downs in the next few years. John was tired of London too - tired of what it did to Sherlock.

One morning, walking down Whitehall with a coffee and a frown, Greg glimpsed a familiar figure on the street.

Mycroft was standing by the open door of his gleaming black car - and he was talking to a guy. A grinning, pink-cheeked, dark-eyed guy, in a leather jacket like Greg used to wear, and they were laughing about something together.

“Well… thanks for the lift,” Greg heard the guy say as he passed, keeping his head down, his expression set.

“Not at all,” Mycroft replied, coolly. “Until next time.”

Greg rang Toronto Police Service that afternoon. They could send him expenses now, to help him get ready to relocate. And did he need the paperwork to bring a family? They could help him with the immigration process from start to finish, if he needed.

No, Greg told the friendly voice on the line.

It was just him.

 

* * *

 

“How are you going to tell Mycroft?” John asked, a few weeks later. They’d run into each other in the bread aisle of Sainsburys. He was now looking at Greg like he’d just announced the death of a close friend.

“I… didn’t know I had to,” Greg said, frowning. He put a bag of oven-bottom muffins in his basket. “S'nothing to do with him.”

John despaired for a moment. “Greg, you two have history. A lot of history. If he finds out you’ve just up and emigrated to  _Canada…_ ”

“What’s he gonna do?” Greg snorted. “Have me extradited?”

“He’ll be hurt, Greg… honestly, he’ll be very hurt.”

“Will he? We broke up, remember? For good this time. Now he's…”  _Seeing someone else._ Greg couldn’t say it. “… moved on. And I’m moving on, too. It’s not a big deal.”

“You’re moving to  _Canada_. How is that not a ‘big deal’?”

Greg thought to say, briefly, that he could move to the fucking moon and he’d still miss Mycroft Holmes. Right now, Mycroft’s opulent Belgravia flat - with its king-size bed, swathed in silk sheets - was a single taxi ride away. It didn’t matter. It might as well be in Outer Mongolia, for all the space that stood between them.

“It’s over, John,” he said, his throat thick. He tossed a packet of tortillas into his basket. “It’s done, now.”

“You… should at least call him. He’ll want to hear it from you.”

“Yeah?” said Greg. “Then tell him to unblock my phone.”

 

* * *

 

Greg should have known it was a trap.

“Come round for a takeaway,” John had said. “We won’t get the chance to do this for much longer… the Hong Kong Kitchen won’t deliver to Canada.”

Greg arrived at Baker Street to find no evidence of Chinese food, Sherlock and John putting their coats on to go out, and an annoyed Mycroft Holmes standing in the lounge.

“Tell him,” John muttered to Greg, as he shepherded Sherlock onto the stairs.

The door shut after them far below.

“Tell me… what?” Mycroft asked, cold.

It was the first time they’d been in one room together since the break-up.

“I’m… moving,” Greg said. His heart was attempting to kick its way out of his throat. “End of March. John thought you should know because of - … well, history… I tried to tell him you wouldn’t care, but I guess he thinks he knows better.”

Mycroft’s eyes narrowed across the lounge at him.

“Moving to  _where_ , might I ask?”

 

* * *

 

The e-mail Greg received the next morning went on at some length. It ended with Mycroft’s firm assurances that he didn’t care if Greg moved to the outer reaches of the cosmos - and, furthermore, “that guy” (as Greg had so termed him) was none of Greg’s business - and, if Greg had thought Mycroft would somehow be  _upset_ by his emigration to Canada, he was very much mistaken.

Greg tried to send a reply, which bounced back.

He texted John, told him he was honestly a bit of an interfering prick sometimes, and continued packing up his flat.

 

* * *

 

Greg spent the week before the move living out of a suitcase. Everything else had been sent ahead - it would be waiting for him in his new home.

A lot of people asked if he had plans for his final night - with a hopeful hint of drinks, or a meal maybe, or a party - some kind of goodbye - but Greg told them all he was busy.

Instead, he sat in his empty flat with the door unlocked, everything packed around him for the morning. He ate a microwave lasagne straight from the container, washed it up and took the packaging out to the bin. He checked his passport; he checked his flight details for tomorrow. He smoked at the window, watching the empty street.

By ten, he started to worry it wouldn’t happen.

One last chance, he’d thought. One last unlocked door.

Just in case.

By midnight, the matter was settled.

Greg took a black bag full of memories out to the bin. They were the last things to go - train tickets; letters saying I hate you, letters saying I love you; the receipts for expensive gifts he hadn’t really been able to afford; scraps of the birthday paper he’d found with umbrellas on it. Valentine’s cards.  _I’m sorry,_ one said inside, the green ink blotched and the handwriting shaky.  _I’m sorry I am broken. We’ll make it work this time, I swear. Just never leave me again. Yours - always yours. Your sea-urchin. Your Spiky Myc._ A hundred green ink kisses. Greg counted them. He’d counted them all, and they were there.

He crushed them down into the bin with his heel, along with all the rest.

He drank the half-bottle of red wine he’d put by the bed just in case. He drank it like if he just got it down fast enough, it would burn it all out -  _all_ of it - every fight, every kiss, every fucking miracle, every stupid mistake. The first night, some warehouse in Hackney Myc had kidnapped him to, offering him money to spy on Sherlock. The last time they were together - sleepy Sunday morning in their bed, biting Myc’s neck the way Greg knew he liked, thighs locked around his waist, fingernails digging into his back, Mycroft groaning in his ear that he felt big.  _Come for me, baby. Show me you belong to me._

His forty-fifth birthday in New York.

Mycroft had kissed him on the top of the Rockefeller Center like they’d never hurt each other before, like they never would again.

“Don’t ever leave me,” he’d breathed in Greg’s ear, as the whole city glittered below them and all the stars glittered above. “Forever, this time. We shall make it this time.”

They’d broken up two weeks later.

He’d caught Mycroft reading his texts.

 

* * *

 

Greg slept until eight on the morning of his flight. He got up, had an Alka Seltzer, dropped the keys of his flat off at the estate agent, and caught his taxi to the airport just after nine, his suitcase thumping quietly in the boot. He watched London go by as they drove, grey and empty.

There was nothing left for him now, he thought.

He was making the right decision.

He checked in at Heathrow, went through baggage control and security, and found the right gate. He bought a pasta salad to have with him on the plane. He found somewhere to sit, and checked his phone one final time - no new messages.

As he stared at the screen, he realised he couldn’t remember their last kiss.

They hadn’t known, he thought - hadn’t had a clue. Last kisses had never been last kisses until now. Every single one had come before another first kiss.

Somewhere, lost in the rush of his memory, was his final,  _final_ kiss with Mycroft Holmes.

He hoped it had been good.

One of those kisses where he took Mycroft’s face in his hands, and told those perfect grey eyes they were gorgeous - told him it was okay he was a Spiky Myc sometimes, and that Greg didn’t care - loved him anyway - then kissed him like he meant it. Kissed him like there would never be any joy in the world, if there wasn’t Mycroft there to share it with him.

He hoped Mycroft remembered their last kiss, even if he couldn’t.

At a minute to twelve, the gate was opened.

And a cry rang out through the terminal.

“ _GREG…!_ ”

He hadn’t shaved - he hadn’t slept. He ran the length of the terminal like there were dogs at his heels, his coat flying behind him, and people fled from his path in alarm.

Mycroft didn’t see them. He seemed to only see Greg - saw him through burning, desperate tears.

Greg found himself on his feet.

He was running before he knew he’d even moved.

“Please, don’t leave,” Mycroft wept in his ear, as they sat in a broken pile on the floor of Terminal Five. Security were rushing this way. Greg could see them advancing in his peripheral vision. He didn’t care. He clung to Mycroft. He cried into his stupid hair. Mycroft clung to him too, shaking so hard he could hardly speak. “I beg you, please…”

Greg buried his hands under Mycroft’s coat, gripping him tightly as the whole world exploded in colour.

“I won't,” he promised. “I won't, I won't. I won't go. M'sorry.”

“Take me with you,” Mycroft pleaded. The first security officer had reached them. Mycroft dug his fingers into Greg’s shoulder blades. “Damn it… take me too.”

It took two hours, three checks of his ID and several furious phone calls before Heathrow Security were prepared to believe who Mycroft was. He threatened to have the lot of them deported if they laid so much as a latex-gloved finger on Greg, the entirety of whose possessions were now swiftly on their way to Canada.

“You don’t need your things,” Mycroft said, as they finally got into a car. He pushed Greg back against the leather seat, climbed onto his lap and kissed him with a desperation that took Greg’s breath away, burying his hands in Greg’s hair so hard it hurt. “Move in with me,” he gasped against Greg’s mouth, between kisses. “Until the paperwork is done… and then we shall both go. We will start afresh. It will all be different this time. I  _promise_.”

Greg took him by the face, staring up into his eyes.

“Don’t,” he breathed. “Don’t tell me it’ll be different.”

Mycroft swallowed, searching his face. “What?”

“I don’t want it different,” Greg said, fiercely. “I want it just the same. No matter what it is." 

It was this or nothing, he realised. 

 _This or nothing_.

"Hurt me,” he begged as Mycroft’s eyes blazed at him, shining with tears. The world was full of colour; everything was okay. “Ruin me. Break me into pieces. Spend the rest of your life telling me I’m a prick and you hate the sight of me. Just don’t ever let me go.”

 


End file.
